Winner of the 2013 Gazing Grain Chapbook Prize

In a haunting collective voice that alternates between philosophic instruction to arresting confession, We Can’t Read This is a how-to on re-imagining the body and language when one is denied the instruments of voice and hearing. Through diagrams of sign language and spare fragmented lyrics, the series dramatizes the physical struggle of speech and movingly charts alternate modes of cognition. These poems are a personal and political rumination on disability as well as a beautiful and transformative exegesis on empathy.